Vivian Gruenenfelder, Rev.

Today as we experience the emotion of grief, as we grieve the loss of Rev. Master Chosei, I’d like to look further into this subject of emotions. Sometimes we oppose emotions to analytical thinking, or reason, or the intellect, and conclude that emotions are bad or destructive, messy, uncontrollable and dangerous – some of my emotions ARE dangerous – and that reason and the intellect are good and helpful and moral, and not quite so harmful. But I think that if we look closely at our meditation practice, we can see first of all that emotions are always present – and I’ve got a question mark after the word “always” there, so I urge you to explore the supposition that the emotions are always present – and secondly that emotions and thoughts arise together and can’t actually be separated, like a wave can’t be separated from water.

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